Rail Riots, an unusual snowboard event at a weird time of the year.  For the 4th year in a row Postland Theory’s Tim Schiphorst promised late summer snowboarding in a giant fridge named Montana in Holland while camping in the woods a with bunch of rail goons for a low price. This sounded like the right mix of snowboard nonsense to convince many to jump on the next bus, train, car or boat for the season’s first “mission”.

Eager riders came out to jam the Dutch glaciers from all corners of the map. Thrashmore and Will Smith traversed the North Seas with a stellar team from the UK, The Secret Family drove half a day across the Italian Alps. The Los Angeles River gang of mixed ragamuffins with cool cats like Jessi Blackwell and Simon Houlind. They showed up in the not so latest caravans that transformed into a pop-up parking lot thrift shop with a selection of track suits, jeans your dad wore listening to Springsteen in ’86, colourful K-Ways and other prime pieces to be snatch up by any connoisseur of fashion. The freshly rehabilitated Artem Smolin and Dutchie Cees Wille are on some sort of school exchange program sharing the past year in each others countries came to ride. Igor Kylakov, Dimi Shubin and the rest of the (Belo)Russians including Zhenya the photographer had to do bureaucratic back flips through visa hoops to come over. Germo-Austrians like Raffael Kossmann and Christoph Schwarz snuck in through the back door by blocking the door with a shnitzel. Plenty of classy ladies like Ivika Jürgenson and Isabella Groenestein were ripping in full form with a squad of females. The New Zoolander David Van Gessel even came out to see his beloved Holland again. Of course plenty of other Dutch locals like Jesse Augustinus, Roel van Oosterhout, Kas Lemmens and Bob van Unnik came out to do what they do best, scrape the freezer!

Inside the freezer things chilled forever at a -2° according to the digital thermometer/clock. Kids were violently dragged into an endless run of jibbing oblivion that as always supposed to end 40mins ago. The addictive park run designed by local Wessel Van Lierop was enjoyed by all with crispy frozen smiles for 3 days straight highlighted by the Dalikfoda Barrier Cult session, the streetest thing to ever happen indoors. When they finally managed to take the needle out of their arm, the rioters went and “chilled” in the 30 degrees sunshine outside.

Artem Smolin strapped in for the first time after he broke his back in Sweden last February as we could see in Postland’s new movie. Infecting other riders with his stoke, he pretty much remained strapped in the entire weekend, pretty much not taking a single break.

Outside the frozen faces were thawed with a mix of skate and weed. The rioters fuelled at the the local Doner joint eat kapsalons at an alarming pace. The housing, situated at a lush camping site between the potato and corn fields. At night, like a pagan ceremony, beer was sacrificed in the small brick amphitheater around the big fire watching the Postland and Method movies cheering along. 

The scene was like something out of The Warriors movie. For a moment I felt we were a clan with a purpose that shared an ideology in a secret indoor snowboarding Fight Club. Then I felt, maybe, that last toke was enough. Everyone slowly faded off back to their tents to fall asleep, to be woken 2 hours laters, yelling so loud, you could only conclude that a fight or a clash with a rival clan had erupted. No, they are just drunk, they are just Dutch and you are snowboarding in Holland sleeping outside of an oversized freezer because seasons are too slow. Nothing makes sense. I’m going back into the freezer till this season is ready to get cooking!

With Ivika now in the lift, Dimi Shubin puts it down. Whenever he wasn’t snowboarding he killed it with a shovel, always making sure the park was in prime condition.

The idea of an indoor BarrierKult session started already 4 years ago, but getting a 700KG barrier onto the slope that’s to small for big machinery proved difficult. Wessel Van Lierop anonymously backtails here for some Guiness.

Notice that however Wessel is pictured, you always see a crack in his snowboard. Please, let somebody give him some proper gear! Although next to broken boards, also literally 4 rails got broken during the weekend. I guess that’s the spirit of a Riot. The previous edition got cancelled because the camping got to trashed, but now we’re stoked to announce that next year Postland will be back with another camp. See you there!

Text by Alexis De Tarade

Captions by Tim Schiphorst

Photos by Zhenya Pavlov